Education is not getting much attention on the presidential campaign trail, but that doesn’t mean the next administration won’t face a variety of opportunities and challenges in the education sector. In fact, the relative silence is misleading. Given the changes and competing pressures buffeting America’s education system, leaders in the Department of Read more
Even though school principals have a powerful impact on teaching and student achievement, in general they remain relatively low priorities on crowded state education policy agendas. A new report recently released suggests a number of possible actions that state policymakers can consider to raise the profile of principals on policy Read more
Over the past 15 years, a national consensus has slowly coalesced around one of the most enduring and contentious debates in education circles: how to hold schools and districts accountable for improving outcomes. The Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA, is in many ways the culmination of the movement towards Read more
In the late 1970’s, education research was deemed a pseudoscience by many in the field due to a lack of clear data and results that pointed to effective practice. In response, researchers began designing field experiments to test the effectiveness of programs and practices. In recent years, as concern over Read more
A recent opinion blog, written by Michael J. Petrilli, President of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, discusses the education sector’s exhaustion with policies on education reform. Mr. Petrilli writes: It strikes me, and several others with whom I’ve spoken in recent months, that education reform is at a turning point. Read more
A group of leading teacher preparation program providers – Deans for Impact – released a set of policy recommendations calling for outcomes-based accountability and data-informed improvement in teacher preparation. Their recommendations are consistent with the following findings: Teacher preparation programs are disconnected from local labor market needs. There is no incentive for teacher Read more
A recent Education Week blog by Marc Tucker examines what it truly takes to get a first-rate teacher in front of every student, and compares the United States systems to the rest of the world. Some experts estimate that half of those who start a career in teaching are gone in Read more
A recent article from Education Week, by Marc Tucker, criticizes the way states are handling the implementation of ESSA. The hottest item at the recent meeting of the Council of Chief State School Officers was ESSA, the new federal education legislation that replaced No Child Left Behind, but the big Read more
Great teachers matter-we all know that. But great principals matter nearly as much. When they lead a team of teacher-leaders in instructional excellence, student learning can soar. But then what? Can principals like these take their leadership to the next level and stay connected to teachers and students? In An Read more
Learning Forward and the National Commission on Teaching & America’s Future (NCTAF) are pleased to announce that the application process for the Agents for Learning Competition (www.learningforward.org/get-involved/agents-for-learning-competition) is now officially open. The goal of the competition is to engage educator teams in advocating for the best use of federal funding Read more
New Teacher Center has released a new report on all 50 states that takes a look at the support available for new principals and new teachers. The results show only a slight improvement over the past few years. Support From the Start: A 50-State Review of Policies on New Educator Read more
Policymakers and practitioners who face a deluge of important decisions affecting thousands of schools can find advice from some of the top education thinkers in the country in JFF’s new brief, Advancing Deeper Learning Under ESSA: Seven Priorities. The piece recommends ways that supporters of deeper learning can make the Read more
In the early days of the accountability movement, Jeb Bush’s Florida developed an innovative approach to evaluating school quality. First, the state looked at individual student progress over time—making it one of the first to do so. Then it put special emphasis on the gains (or lack thereof) of the Read more
In a recent New York Times opinion piece, Angela Duckworth, founder and scientific director of the Character Lab and the author of the forthcoming book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, recommends against using the results of character surveys for school accountability. A short excerpt from Mrs. Duckworth follows: Read more
New Teacher Center (NTC) has released a national report showing that most states provide insufficient mentoring and support for teachers and principals as they start their careers. The report—Support From The Start: A 50-State Review of Policies on New Educator Induction and Mentoring—shows only limited progress in most states since Read more
Deans for Impact recently looked at nearly two dozen educator preparation programs and found that only six have access to student achievement data connected to the teachers they prepared. Less than a third have access to other kinds of data about their graduates’ performance, like classroom observations. The organization, in Read more